


this crown of thorns

by Anchoret



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blood and Injury, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:54:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23855680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anchoret/pseuds/Anchoret
Summary: What you might call a slight hiccup in the fifteenth century.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 167





	this crown of thorns

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tags. At least two thirds of this contains graphic torture.

“What did you do with the book? _What did you do with it? Answer me,_ demon!”

The bishop’s voice reverberates like an endless bell under the arch of the narrow crypt, ricocheting off the wet stone walls and rough-paved floors, rattling the wrought iron chains wound around Crowley’s upper arms and wrist.

Crowley is grateful for the low ceiling now, after hours of the same rot. As creative as humanity generally tends to be, in this, _pain_ , Crowley has found that five thousand years had inspired little in them by way of creativity.

The height of the place allows him to take some of the strain off his shoulders by standing on the tips of his toes, at least, so that he can better zone out all the trash springing out of the priest’s mouth.

Only hours ago, Crowley had resented the grimness of the space, the throat-closing claustrophobic panic, its overwhelming resemblance to certain districts of hell. Now, he has no presence of mind left to be anywhere but here – here and now, painfully present, painfully awake, painfully – _bored_.

The stonework is old, Crowley notes with ennui amidst the priest’s next bout of ranting, and oh, how beautifully designed for its period. Compared to the splendor of arabesques and engravings topside, however, the carving itself seems quite crude and childish, not made with terribly fine tools, which is likely why the chamber stinks of stale air at least two centuries old. A forgotten room, with its forgotten prayers.

And soon, a forgotten demon, if the priest doesn’t deign to put him out of his misery when these hysterics are done and dusted. He’d continue to hang here, for – who only knows how long.

No humans would think to find him here, thinks Crowley, almost idly. Not for a few centuries, at the very least. Long after the church itself would have been abandoned, turned to ruins, and rediscovered again as a touristy spectacle or one-off archeological site – if he’s lucky.

It would be a long time to spend in the dark and quiet.

The bright side, Crowley supposes, is that he doesn’t think the hysterics will last long, or that the priest possesses the kind of calm, deliberate cruelty necessary to strand an immortal creature in indefinite stasis. Either the angel from Eden realizes something is wrong and comes calling, or the bishop accidentally discorporates him in a fit of overzealous rage – whichever comes first.

So far, the second option is starting to edge out.

“Have you forgotten how to speak?” The bishop - Angelo something, fitting for such a pretty young man - whispers, grabbing hold of his jaw harshly with one hand, picking up the fire tongs menacingly with the other. The tongs have been embedded in a basket of burning coal so far, which is spitting out tiny sparks of flaming debris like stars. The tips of the tongs are scorched to red-hot brightness, lending a red tinge to the wavering shadows cast by the single candelabra mounted on a wall.

Bizarrely, Crowley thinks of Plato and his precious Cave.

The cloying smell of burning fat and incense spreads on the air, numbing his senses even further.

It takes Crowley a moment to divine what is supposed to happen next, even after the priest pries his mouth open with a thumb, four fingers digging into the underside of his jaw with painful sharpness.

Well - kind of. A narrower definition of pain, for sure – human pain. Ordinary pain.

For him, barely a backdrop to the chronic ones constantly twinging in his limbs, the burnt scars, or that old fracture in his wings, never set right. The constant _wrongness_ of something vital missing that he’s been living with for centuries, at this point.

Sometimes Crowley thinks it’s really unfair that something he’s lost for longer than he’s had can still burn on like an acid-eaten hole in the center of his being, endlessly, all this time later. But then there is no justice to speak of, when their Mother is their judge, jury, and executioner in whole. There are no appeals, no bails, no over-turning of cases.

The human in front of him must think he’s being terribly intimidating. If it weren’t so depressively boring, Crowley would almost be amused.

“Hey, I’m speaking to you,” says the priest, irritated, waving the tongs over his face, sparks everywhere. Then Crowley really does laugh.

“What do you find so amusing, demon?” Angelo-something growls in the cacophony of noise Crowley’s intensifying laugh creates, and oh, how _cute_ –

“Signore Angelo – your name _is_ Angelo, isn’t it?” Crowley continues without waiting for an answer. “Do you really think you can torture a _demon_ into _confessing_?”

“So you did steal it,” says the priest, teeth grinding audibly.

Unbelievable. No appreciation for the absurdity or the irony of the situation, _at all_. How dull are the clergymen in this town, exactly? Crowley remembered them to possess more wit than this.

“You have _no idea_ what’s waiting for you in hell,” Crowley promises him, biting out every word with bloody relish. “This is nothing. Things you cannot even _begin_ to imagine, not in a thousand years --”

That’s a lie, of course. The punishment reserved for humans in hell are ones the humans are perfectly capable of thinking up on their own. The ones for demons, now -

“I’m not the one going to hell,” replies Angelo calmly.

Unfortunately, the bishop does kind of have a point. Crowley isn’t in the Souls Acquisitions Department, but he’s heard that only very rarely do members of the clergy come tgiguehrough.

Not because they’re any less evil than the average human, mind, but because heaven tends to snatch them up rather indiscriminately. Cult members, too. Citing reasons of piety. It’s been a point of contention between heaven and hell for as long as religious institutions have existed.

Well, a minor point of contention. Compared to the big one, that is.

“Look, there’s nothing you can come up with that’ll measure up to the torments I’ve already been through,” says Crowley plainly. “You’ve never listened to the same Clementi piece for a whole year without a single break, have you? And oh, the décor. Don’t even get me started.”

“Can’t hurt trying,” says Angelo, and oh. He’s _that_ sort.

Crowley bares his teeth and lets his control over his eyes go. Not much point holding onto a charade once the jig’s up, anyway.

“You’re welcome to try then, Father –”

His voice breaks on a long hiss; the world fizzes out in a flash of red.

When he blinks aware, the smell of burning flesh floats on the air, acrid. Waveringly, Crowley sees the smoke issuing from the tip of the tongs, charred flesh clinging to it.

The pain swoops in like a famished thing, its nips spreading and worsening, reaching into his veins and poisoning him until his whole body is singing with it.

Something that is probably blood crawls its way down the left side of his chest. Kind of tickles.

“Kind of tickles,” Crowley says out loud, licking his lips and smiling to see the young man’s rage. “Why do you want the book so much, anyway? Is it because they lost it on your _watch_?”

Almost before he can finish, there’s a swift strike from the metal rod, and Crowley’s head snaps to the side. He throws it back and bellows laughter.

“Do you wish to know where the book went, Angelo?”

“Stop speaking my name, you fiend --”

“You’ll never see it again,” Crowley licks the corners of his mouth and smiles again, slowly. He wonders if he asked for communion wine, would the priest be generous enough to grant him some. He’s always wondered how it tasted. “I gave it to a friend. He’s very appreciative.”

“I want the name,” the human hisses.

“Why,” Crowley says with glee. “If I told you, _Angelo_ , your eardrums might shatter. Best not.”

“Do not jest,” says Angelo-something in a low voice, grabbing Crowley’s jaw and forcing his head back. Crowley stares down at him with what he knows to be fully serpentine eyes, blinking against the firelight.

The bishop’s angular features are set in a determined moue. From this angle, his eyes are little more than twin pools of darkness.

He is remarkably unlike his ancestor, Adam.

Such a young, passionate, promising chap. Not bad looking, either, a good voice – perfect for sermons.

“The book does not belong to you,” Angelo continues. “It belongs to the Order of St. Anthony, and it is scheduled to be sent to Florence on the morrow two days hence --”

“For what?” Angelo falls silent. “Well, do tell, Angelo. Or should I spell it out?”

“How did you know --” the young bishop stammers.

Crowley rolls his eyes.

“Let’s just say that, my friend has a deep and abiding hatred of book burnings. Got into a tizzy, didn’t he, when he got word the only copy of this text is set to burn three days from now? Why, he can’t in his good conscience defy divine will to save a little _book_ , can he, much less an alleged _grimoire_ , so off his demon friend goes to retrieve it for him…”

Now that he’s talking about it, Crowley is regretting not taking a peek at the sort of book Aziraphale was so intent on saving before handing it off. Aziraphale only told him it was a book of magic, written by a little-known thirteenth-century occultist in Spain, and then clammed up as soon as Crowley asked what, exactly, the book is written about.

The date and place did ring a faint bell in Crowley’s head, but – well. Five thousand years is a lot of memories to keep hold of at once, and most days Crowley can’t even say what he had for lunch the day prior.

If nothing else, the knowledge would’ve proved a source of entertainment while Crowley waited on a corporation Downstairs.

There is never anything new going on Downstairs. To Crowley, that is the most infernal part of it all: more than the screams, more than the politics, more than the unending fear of becoming cannon fodder to someone else’s wanton experiments, because bored demons are the worst sorts of demons.

He really shouldn’t have gone back into town to hunt for souvenirs. Who knew the Paduan clergy held such impressive grudges?

A sharp pain rudely brings Crowley back into the moment.

“ _Ah --_ ”

He smells burning flesh; he sees the tips of the heated tongs smoking.

“How _uncreative_ ,” Crowley says despite the shivers that have started running up and down his frame. A purely physiological response that runs contrary to the abiding boredom of his psyche.

Still, Angelo-whats-his-face must mistake the reaction for fear, because his lips part in a feral grin, shattering the delicate beauty to reveal a raw savagery beneath.

Ah, and there is the resemblance.

That cruelty is what had made Adam survive the long roads out of the desert, after the Fall, despite all odds. As much as Aziraphale likes to refute him on the point, they both know this is true.

“Where is your friend? What is his name?” Angelo continues where he left off, gesturing the faintly smoking tongs all over Crowley’s body now, from his naked torso, to the torn remains of the dress, to between his legs, to his bound ankles. The heat of it singes some of his hair. “Where has he taken the book? It must be destroyed!”

This obsessive ranting is simply getting tiring. Crowley closes his eyes in the process of rolling it, tries again to gain some proper footing on the floors so that he can doze, but can’t really find any purchase. His shoulders are halfway through dislocation, he knows.

On a list of Top Painful Things Crowley Has Felt, this will make it into maybe…Number Fifty. If Angelo really ups his game and doesn’t kill him too soon, which is the easiest rookie mistake to make.

“You’re too green,” Crowley informs him idly. “Tell you what, if you let me down, I’ll teach you how to do this properly. Free of charge, no strings attached. Much cleaner and much more effective methods. Not that you’ll have much chance to put them to use. Once my friend’s here --”

“Your _friend_?” The savage, unattractive grin stretches further on Angelo’s face. His name is starting to misfit his image, Crowley thinks distantly.

Angels are always beautiful – they are at their most beautiful when they are their most terrible. It makes their cruelty that much more devastating.

Demons are hideous and deformed no matter what they do.

“And your friend is a duke of hell, is he?” Angelo whispers, taunting. “Or maybe your Lord himself? When is he coming, do you think? Because there hasn’t been anyone so far.”

Not until the world ends, Crowley thinks. As for the angel - as soon as he pulls his head out of the manuscript, Crowley thinks, which -

Oh no. That could take a while. Looks like discorporation it is, then.

The incense combined with the writhing shadows have a sort of hypnotic effect. His torturer’s face turns into a blur of firelight, his grating voice an underwater roar.

Warm blood pumps sluggishly but steadily from the burn scar on the side of Crowley’s neck, cooling and congealing as they run down his exposed skin.

Oh. Maybe it’s not the incense, maybe it’s the blood loss.

“Don’t kid yourself, demon,” says Angelo, backing away from him. There is a loud clatter of metal; a sharp pull in his shoulders, his feet leaves the ground.

Crowley swears loudly and creatively.

The pain in his shoulders threatens to drown the voice of his consciousness. Crowley’s vision turns black. The room is becoming airless. For a few seconds all he hears is a shrill ringing.

“—I’ve other business to attend to,” Angelo’s cool voice finally registers. It still has that musical, hymnal lilt to it. “We will see if you’re more talkative come morning, unrepentant demon.”

“I have a name,” Crowley mutters blindly while he feels Angelo blowing out all but one of the candles, the lone source of light moving steadily further. He isn’t sure if his tongue is working correctly anymore, doesn’t have the presence of mind to check. “Can’t repent when you’ve not been given a chance, can you?”

The wooden door slams shut with finality, plunging the room into darkness.

*

Crowley wakes to the thunderous but muffled sound of the organ from overhead. There is the faint stamp of feet, many pairs of them, sounding distant. The crypt smells of dead flesh and rancid blood.

His arms have completely lost feeling.

He listens to the chants for a while, dozing, losing track of time. Hanging in the air like a strung-up fish.

Exhaustion settles like a sly creature in the depths of his bones, refusing to come away.

It’s the church, Crowley knows. The holiness is less concentrated down here, but he is still directly beneath several spires, an altar, rows of pews, and a tessellated holy circle laid directly into the blessed stonework of the church floors.

It is going to kill him. Slowly, but surely.

It’s Sunday. The bells are clanging.

“The day of rest,” says Crowley into the darkness. “After Sunday, we doom half our creations to a life of perdition. G-d, I am resting. Are you watching?”

The echoes of his own voice is his only answer.

*

The heavy oak door groans open. Mad, dancing light flushes in. Crowley knows Aziraphale isn’t on the other side as soon as it does.

“New toy, I see,” Crowley rasps, squinting into the sudden light.

The wannabe Inquisitor is carrying a more sizable iron rod today; whether he broke that from the spires of a carriage or the roasting rack over a kitchen pit, Crowley has no particular wish to know.

It’ll be an exemplarily efficient weapon at breaking the bones in a mortal body, and possibly driving holes into one, if the wielder has enough force and feels particularly murderous that day.

Crowley no longer doubts Angelo’s willingness to kill. He merely ponders the question of how, and how soon.

“Ready to tell me where to find our stolen treasure?” The young man asks evenly as he cranks the chains lower. Crowley’s toes sweep the ground, barely.

“Dunno,” Crowley mutters. “Could be anywhere, I figure. That is, I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew. Just so you’re aware.”

There is only a split second to process before the rod swings wide and slams directly into Crowley’s torso.

Crowley whites out for several seconds. When he comes to, he knows at least one of his ribs is broken. On his right side. Where G-d created Eve from a section of Adam’s bone.

His laughter this time sounds deranged even to himself.

“Will you take a bone and craft a woman of it? Well, I am both and neither,” Crowley babbles, looking up into the darkness of the arched ceiling, ignoring the look of rage on the young believer’s face. “Please do not split me apart. G-d, is this how You made them mortal?”

“Shut up, devil. Do not desecrate His name,” The man with the name of an angel says. “Give up the location of the forbidden text, and I may yet grant you an easeful death.”

“As if I care for ease,” Crowley scoffs, delirious. “What you can do to me is _nothing_ compared to what my friend is capable of - he would look _so_ _disappointed_ if I talked! I might as well let you discorporate me before that happens -”

Angelo leaves the room.

When he returns, he’s carrying the same basket of burning coal as yesterday, presumably with more mediocre torture instruments inside.

Crowley starts to cackle, shaking his entire body hanging from the chains. _Why, the gaudy showiness of it all!_

Oh it hurts, it _hurts_ , but it is mortal pain, it is pain of the flesh, and it has nothing, _nothing_ on the cursed fires of hell, the torments that an eternal being is capable of withstanding, and it has nothing on the angel’s smile when the first light crept over the plains of Golgotha, over the rough earth dark with the carpenter’s blood.

“You can cut my tongue off,” Crowley pants, laughing into the air choke full of smoke. “You can cut me into pieces, you can take that thing in your hands and shove it down my throat, or between my ears. Feel free! I will never hand you that which you most desire -”

Angelo might’ve been doing more to him, but Crowley has stopped registering any of it, seized by something dangerously close to Ecstasy, to Rapture. Words flowed from his lips like mouthfuls of blood.

“In fifty years’ time you will be dead,” Crowley hears himself say. “ _Amico mio_ , you and your convent, and your _forbidden text_ will be printed and reprinted and passed down for all millennia. I will personally make sure of it if I have to! It will be remembered till the end of Time, I assure you, till She decides to make a pool of blood of all Her creations, till the stars I made stop in their turns, I will do this for the angel _AZIRAPHAEL_ , gladly, and _more_ \--”

His voice drowns in a thunderous roar welling up, as if from all around them, like a monstrous wave. Pure white light erupts somewhere in the cellar, lancing sharp bolts of agony behind his eye lids. The heat it exudes is something far more deadly than warmth. The foundations of the church begins to tremble.

 _Has the End come?_ Crowley has the presence of mind to wonder with detached curiosity. _That’s too early by far._

But no, it is only the church. The towering behemoth Crowley thought days ago was going to become his prison and gravesite is being torn down from its roots. Great fissures and cracks line the walls; rubble and debris rains down in a waterfall of dust, pillars snapping and rolling across marble floors. Hundreds of years of art, engravings and sculptures and statues, falling as dust into the earth from whence they came.

Crowley feels all of this viscerally, but the light is blinding after days ( _weeks? months_?) of constant darkness that all he can do is screw his eyes shut and endure. The weight on his condemned soul lifts bit by bit as the grandiose construct of divinity towering over them is taken ruthlessly apart.

All reminders of decay and filth seems to burn away in the presence of the growing light, which calls on some distant parts of Crowley’s memory, dream-like. The air burns clean of soot and ash and blood, while all around them the stonework of the church crumble like dominoes.

In the deluge of holy destruction Crowley feels arms of flesh and blood take hold of him, the heavy chains melt away into nothing, and he is lifted up as a feather on the wind. Not a single fleck of dust touches him as they become lighter than air.

Dimly he senses Angelo’s soul flit past them, released from its mortal prison. And then he lays his head back, smells the familiar scent of safety, and allows his consciousness to fall away.

*

  
His hands are bound.

“— _Fuck_ , my hands, let me go you _fucking bastard_ \--”

Another pair of hands – strong, familiar, well-manicured – push him back down onto a springy surface. Crowley senses the free flow of air across his skin. The scent of flowers on the wind. The last thing he remembers is –

“Light,” he murmurs, hoarse.

“Here,” says his angel’s voice, and the rim of a cool glass touch his lips.

Crowley drinks, greedily, deeply, helplessly grateful that he possesses a mortal body, that it can feel not only misery but this, too: the simple pleasure of _being_.

“Fuck,” says Crowley, again, and the angel answers,

“Take it easy, dear. The wound on your neck is starting to infect, I think.”

Crowley chokes on his last sip of water, startled into incredulous laughter.

“Infection? Me? That’s a first.”

“That church, dear,” says Aziraphale, tutting. And it is Aziraphale – Crowley cracks open bleary eyes to see him, clad in a beige tunic, sitting prim on the edge of the cot. His blue eyes warmer than Crowley thinks he has ever seen them. Hairdo as awful as the last time they saw each other.

The angel’s wings are hidden away, but Crowley knows their light, now; he should have known it anywhere in the world.

“I called in a favour from a local physician to patch you up,” says Aziraphale, sipping something that smells vaguely herbal. “Do please stay in bed and don’t move for three weeks, at least.”

“I can heal myself,” Crowley grumbles, but Aziraphale lays a hand on his shoulder before he can force himself to try.

“Just – think of it as a request from me,” the angel sighs.

Crowley settles down reluctantly. Aziraphale has a point anyway; he can heal himself, sure, but it wouldn’t be very pleasant. At all.

His eyes roam the bare interior of the white-plaster house once, and then flicks to the window. There is a blue jay hopping shyly between the branches of honey locusts drooping with flowers.

“Were you nearby?” To sense him, he meant.

“My dear,” Aziraphale says, heavy. “I was halfway across the world. Or, well, across Europe.”

He regards Crowley with a peculiar sort of carefulness, uncertainty flickering in warm teal eyes. At last, he seems to come to some kind of conclusion, and enunciates:

“You were speaking in the Old Tongue then, Crowley.”

“…Oh.”

He’s not sure what to say beyond that. It’s like – well. Centuries later, when Crowley thinks back on this little misadventure, he would think it was a bit like accidentally dialing an old, disused number of one’s family, ages after the disowning, while drunk or high or something. At present, though, Crowley struggles to come up with a comparison that encompasses the enormity of the awkwardness at hand.

Not just that he accidentally dialed, but that – Aziraphale has been _attuned_ to him, to receive that call.

_For how long?_

Crowley can hardly bring himself to ask that question. So like all the rest of his secrets, it drops to the bottom of his stomach like a hard, round stone.

“I --” Aziraphale puts down his cup. Crowley sees a tremor in his hand, and longs to lay his own hand over it, keep it calm and still. “You must understand, for a second, it was almost like - _Before_. When we – that is, the angels, were truly close to each other. I Appeared almost instantly. Couldn’t help myself.”

Crowley doesn’t know what to say to that, either. The painful, nostalgic light in Aziraphale’s eyes only twists his insides into guilty tatters.

He doesn’t remember how to talk in the Old Tongue, the Celestial Tongue, not consciously. And of those idyllic days of love and harmony, what he does remember – well. That wasn’t really him, anyway. Except for the bit at the end, maybe.

He feels like he’d lied. Except it wasn’t him who lied – but who he used to be. He’d been betrayed by none other than himself.

“My dear, I think I owe you an apology,” Aziraphale says suddenly.

“What? This had nothing to do with you, angel --”

“Of course it had,” says Aziraphale harshly. “ _I_ asked you to retrieve that book for me.”

“ _I_ was the one who chose to go back --”

“And the only reason I asked,” Aziraphale barrels on. “Is because the book in question is a work of demonology. Quite an accurate one, I might add. Including manuals on how to subdue, and… _kill_ , and - so on. I can’t think what Savonarola might choose to do with it, or to _you_ , were he to come across it. Crowley, it has records of _you_ in its pages.”

Crowley stills.

“…Oh.”

Vague memories of a small, Spanish seaside town. Fire. Delirium.

Took him ten years to get out of hell again.

“I could have let it burn,” says Aziraphale slowly, carefully, enunciating every word as if they were precious jewels to be polished and then put on display, neatly, in a row. “But I coveted it for myself. I didn’t want to tell you, because it pained you so to be reminded of it all sometimes, Crowley.”

The angel’s eyes are too sympathetic for Crowley’s comfort. To be reminded – of what? Of his changed, cursed nature? Of the long, torturous centuries since its happening? Neither is a subject either of them could bear to broach.

“I – there’s nothing wrong with coveting knowledge,” Crowley grasps at the first half of the statement, the one he is capable, at least, of dealing with. “It was my biggest contribution to the formation of humanity, you know,” he summons a crooked smile, hoping it reaches his eyes.

 _And my greatest regret somedays_ , he doesn’t say, but the way Aziraphale looks at him, the answer must show somewhere on his face.

“It doesn’t matter,” Crowley stresses, because he is nothing if not stubborn, and because stubbornness is the single propelling force that has kept him from giving up for thousands of years, through heaven, and hell, and Earth.

(That, and the feeble, flimsy thing they call _hope_.)

“It was all a bit of a lark, you understand. Mortal pain. Mortal body. This --” Crowley lifts a hand from under the thin sheets and waves it around a bit, despite Aziraphale’s disapproving glare and the resulting, stabbing pain, “—Isn’t me at all. It’s – a meatsuit. A shell. A – whatever a thing outside of a self is.”

Aziraphale lays a hand on Crowley’s, scorching-hot, and tucks it back under the sheets. His pink mouth is pursed tight. “Well, you’re not wrong, _technically_ , but --” He sighs deeply then, lovely face pinched, stumped. He seems deeply unhappy to be lost for words on this occasion.

“In any case, my dear,” Aziraphale settles on. “I’m unspeakably sorry that you had to suffer that. And for my sake, too,” he adds, quiet.

Merciless bastard that he is, laying the most deadly weapon against Crowley in the open like that.

And it is a weapon, because they both know now – after this, there could hardly be any denying. Crowley has unwittingly handed that blade, sharper than ever the flaming sword could have been, into his angel’s steady, loving hands.

Crowley stares at the off-white coverlet.

“It’s nothing compared to half the stuff that goes on Downstairs, anyway,” Crowley whispers after a few beats of silence.

He just – he _needs_ to make the angel understand, somehow: That this is hardly worth anything, really. There is no need for gratitude, or guilt, or anything of the sort. It is hardly as if he’d done a heroic deed worthy of commendation, or, or -

He would do more, gladly, suffer molten lava and holy fire if he must, _anything_ he could do to please, to be indispensable to –

He'll wear this crown of thorns, gladly, if only -

But then the way Aziraphale gazes at him, with an air of sorrowful concern, intermixed with tired resignation, quickly prompts Crowley to change the topic.

“Is the book safe now, at least?”

“Why yes,” Aziraphale brightens with visible smugness. “Locked in the backroom and all. Right next to Pico’s _Theses_.”

“And we’re in - ”

The answer, when it comes, is startling.

“Venice,” says the angel with a grimace. “I didn’t dare fly you too far – and anywhere else is ripe with war at the moment. So this had to do.” He blushes a little, and coughs, before he’s able to speak the rest. “A – ah, a local farmer, may have seen me touch down. Insisted that we come in.”

That explains the quiet. The peacefulness is unsettling, almost unreal after the recent events in the mausoleum, and decidedly a sharp contrast to what Crowley had readied himself for: hell, in all its hot, humid, claustrophobic awfulness.

Instead, he's getting this: Aziraphale, and a farm house.

It doesn't quite seem right, somehow - like an equation gone wrong somewhere in the middle. But it must be real, because Crowley could hardly have dreamt up something so lovely as this. His dreams are never this nice.

He fidgets when Aziraphale says nothing else, only drinking a cup of tea that’s almost certainly the result of some miracle or other.

“So, what – I’m to lie here, for three weeks?”

“Yes, dear,” answers Aziraphale, serene.

Crowley hisses, trying to think of some way to wiggle out of this confined rest. Unfortunately, he has never been as good at finding loopholes as Aziraphale is, who possesses an unparalleled talent and wealth of experience on this subject. But Crowley doesn’t know that, otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to try.

“What about – well, can I at least cook, or --”

“No, dear. I’ll do that for you.”

“Ugh. Must you? I haven’t forgotten about the Burnt Bottom Disaster of Byblos --”

Aziraphale’s cheeks pink.

“I can very well cut bread and cheese, thank you,” he says, somewhat tetchily. “And I think they’re rather short on wine at the moment,” he adds, apparently just to see Crowley wince.

There’s the Aziraphale Crowley knows, at least. He’d always thought Aziraphale’s calm spells had an affected quality to it, the angel being the naturally expressive creature that he is. A neutral state should not exist for one such as him.

Some of those thoughts must leak through on his face, because Aziraphale beams down at him again, putting a hand over the coverlet.

“Just until you recover enough to fix things yourself, Crowley, and then we’ll go home.”

 _Home_. The lovely ring of that word sweeps all his aches away, for a moment. He settles more deeply into the scratchy blankets, smelling the sweetness of the sea and flowers on the air. Then he closes his eyes.

“Mmh,” he mumbles.

“And I’ll read to you. _Decameron_ , even, if you like. Whatever you like.”


End file.
